My Setup As Of May 2025

I didn’t make any explicit resolutions for 2025, but I think the one that ended up happening was “be handy”. I knew I needed three things: A way to store my music, a way to play my music, and a way to hear my music. S***ify wouldn’t cut it anymore.

I used to listen to everything on either my dad’s old Radio Shack boombox, or in my car’s CD player. That was all fine and dandy until the boombox started to erase my tapes. My copy of Pay Attention by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones got caught in the CD changer, which then refused to play. I smashed it for a music video. Then, a bootleg CD from Tanzania melted in my car’s CD player, rendering that inoperable too. I got rear ended, and the new car only has radio and bluetooth.

I have about 600 CDs, 50 tapes, and 40 records.

My apartment came with a restaurant kitchen-style rack shelf unit in the living room. I had been storing my CDs and tapes in disorganized stacks on three of the shelves, with the other three storing my books, my tax documents, my computer equipment, really anything I didn’t want taking up my limited desk space. All my digipaks were starting to get squashed, and every time I wanted to listen to something on the bottom layer I had to brace the pile to keep it from falling.

So, I bought some primer, some lumber, some molding, and I got to work. I used some old white paint and wood glue that my parents had lying around in their workshop and glued and painted three more shelves. I also (sloppily) repainted the six old shelves, so that they would match the new ones. It took about a week of back and forth to my parents’ place, cutting, gluing, sanding, priming, waiting for it to dry, painting, waiting, painting again, so on and so forth.

While working on the shelves, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Hidden beneath a layer of neglect was an old Sony CD player. My dad had completely forgotten about it, and agreed to let me have it. I also got a shitty Victrola x-in-one from another cousin for free, but I don’t trust my records on it, and the EQ on the tape player and CD player is dark and boomy. I use it to elevate my practice amp in my bedroom.

I did a little research and decided I didn’t give a shit about gold-plated cables or power conditioning. I grabbed the audiophile basic bitch Audio-Technica AT-LP120XUSB on an after-Christmas sale. I also bought some powered speakers from Edifier and some speaker stands from Kanto which are slightly too small for them. I grabbed the first receiver off of craigslist that had a phono in and a pre-amp out, which ended up being a Sherwood R-945mkii.

For the first few days, I left the three units stacked on top of each other, but then I realized that the bottom of the CD player was getting hot from the receiver. I ordered a freestanding Salamander Archetype shelf through Audio Nexus in Summit. As I was putting that together, I realized that the desk hutch I was using as a television stand was starting to collapse. The particle board around the nails that held the legs in place was disintegrating. I swapped it out for some end tables I got for free from the old lady from the Seeing Eye before it collapsed.

My setup is dead simple. I run the record player and CD player into the receiver, and I run the preamp out of the receiver into the input of the powered speaker. I control the input selection, volume, and EQ from the receiver. No subwoofer, no complex power staging, no audiophile snake oil. Does my setup sound good? At the volumes tolerable to my neighbors, it sounds fine. I haven’t gotten the stereo image to sound as good as headphones yet, but I can at least play music for my friends or while doing chores now. I can finally listen to my vinyl record collection, too!

Next on the handylist is digitize the CD collection and add it to Discogs, then re-solder my dead guitar cables, get a standalone tape deck, copper-shield my basses, add velcro to my pedals, then copper-shield my guitars, de-gunk the fan above my range, repair the passive PA in the practice space so I can use the active PA for shows, fix my wobbly chair…